


Losing the Forest for the Trees

by Starrie_Wolf



Series: #LoveWins Challenge [8]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Light Angst, M/M, Misappropriation of canon dialogue, POV Stiles, Season/Series 01, Soul Bond, Stilinski Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 00:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4725494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrie_Wolf/pseuds/Starrie_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So not only was his soulmate six years older than him, but also probably a murderer. How was he supposed to tell his Dad?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Losing the Forest for the Trees

**Author's Note:**

> _Original prompt: [Fluff. "losing the forest for the trees". magical tree, soulmates but more curious about /how/ they both manage to be around the tree at the same time as each other without fail than /why/ they are (maybe the bond is triggered by touch and they would certainly not touch each other purposefully considering derek's a leather bound pair of aggressive eyebrows and stiles is a flailing sarcastic underage student and meeting minors in the woods is sketchy enough thanks)]_
> 
> Right, the muse completely ran away from me on this one... the magic tree part got replaced by the old Hale house, and the rest of the prompt sounded like logic rather than fluff, and S1 Stiles is honestly a complete mess. One day, I will actually write a full non-canon-compliant AU. But apparently today is not this day.

The burnt-out husk of the old Hale house loomed in front of him like the House of Usher.

Stiles stopped. He hadn’t meant to come again, not deliberately, but it was like his feet had a mind of its own sometime. He’d only meant to go for a walk in the Preserve, to clear his head. But somehow, he always ended up at the old Hale house on these walks.

Stiles vaguely remembered the Hales, the way one might vaguely remember another regular customer at their favourite café. Talia Hale had been a prosecutor with a sharp tongue and sharper eyes, and many a time Stiles had brushed past her around the station. She had been a brilliant lawyer, according to both his father and the newspaper, with her almost uncanny knack to sniff out the truth.

He’d spent a lot of time at the station, after his Mom passed.

Perhaps it was morbid curiosity that made him seek out the Hale house that first time, barely a week after the fire. He didn’t go in, of course – he might have been ten years old but he certainly wasn’t stupid – but sat on a fallen log, staring at the abandoned house. Wondering if the ghosts of the eight dead Hales were looking back at him.

(And if they were, could they see his mother too?)

Six years of near-monthly visits later, Stiles could admit in the safety of his own mind that it was probably the sense of loneliness emanating from the house that drew him in. No moss ever crept past the blackened threshold, no bird ever sang in the vicinity of the ruins. Six years on, and the house was eerily silent as a graveyard, as though the very air still mourned the passing of the inhabitants.

(The youngest Hale would have been born in just another month, Stiles remembered from the report he wasn’t supposed to have read.)

But that was the world they lived in, where bad things happened to good people for no reason.

~*~*~*~*~

“This is private property.”

Stiles _jumped_. He’d been _sure_ there hadn’t been anyone standing there the last time he checked, not that anyone (but him) ever came to the old Hale house.

His mouth was moving on autopilot before he even turned around, as it always did when he was nervous. “Sorry man. We didn’t know –”

Stiles had to blink a second time to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. The man in front of them was the spitting image of Mr Hale, the few times Stiles had seen him pick his wife up from the station. And with the way he’d appeared out of thin air…

Lovely. He’d finally started hallucinating.

The inhaler sailed through the air, and Scott caught it almost instinctively, something he couldn’t have done just the previous week. Stiles stared down at the little white tube. Ghosts couldn’t touch anything, at least he didn’t think so – not that he was an expert on ghosts or anything.

He gasped, grabbing Scott’s shoulder. “Dude. That was _Derek Hale_.” Scott blinked blankly back at him. “You remember right? He’s only like a few years older than us.”

Scott continued to look clueless. “Remember what?”

“His family?” prompted Stiles in a low hiss, and then continued impatiently. “They all burnt to death in a fire six years ago.”

What was he doing back in Beacon Hills, after all these years?

~*~*~*~*~

He didn’t tell his father about the man lurking in the middle of the woods, even though he knew he should. Hale was exactly how he’d imagined a serial killer might look like, someone who might have cut that poor woman in half after murdering her.

Maybe it was the memory of Derek Hale hunched into his leather jacket, standing amidst the graveyard of his entire family, with a look like might have been called _lost_ on a lesser man, that stilled his tongue.

~*~*~*~*~

“Derek? Derek, come on, wake up.”

Gritting his teeth, Stiles leaned down and slapped at the werewolf’s cheeks, and it was like fireworks going off in the back of his eyelids. He hissed, rearing back instinctively, but it didn’t actually hurt. Rather, it felt like someone was rummaging around the inside of his brain as though it were a chest of drawers, piling a haphazard jumble of thoughts upon memories in order to make way for –

No. This wasn’t happening.

“Scott?” he hated the way his voice came out in what could almost be called a plaintive whine, but Stiles thought he might be excused. He couldn’t even _see_ straight at the moment, for God’s sake. “What the hell are we gonna do?”

_You may experience a sensation of vertigo while your brain rearranges itself to accommodate your soul bond…_

_… it is recommended to stay in a quiet room with your soulmate for the next few days and let your bodies acclimatise…_

Finding your soulmate was supposed to be a joyous affair, with a chorus of cupids and angels descending from the heavens and all that crap. Stiles just felt like his heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest.

“I don't know! I can't reach it.”

Derek didn’t even have the decency to wake up when Stiles was having a worldview-shattering revelation. What a jerk.

Stiles was getting depressingly used to that state of affairs.

Like a rubber band stretched to its breaking point, the soul bond snapped into place with a twang he could almost physically _hear_. Instead of lighting up with a torrent of emotions like every article on Wikipedia had indicated, Stiles couldn’t feel anything coming from Derek at all. “I think he's dying.” Stiles’ voice cracked embarrassingly, and God he was going to try to drown himself in the shower later, if there was a later, but there was no time for panic attacks right now. “I think he's dead!”

“Just hold on!” shouted Scott, blissfully unaware of Stiles having a complete mental breakdown behind him. “Oh! I got it! I got it!”

Stiles glanced over at Scott, waving the bullet like he just won the lottery, and sent up a brief prayer that he would survive this encounter.

“Please don't kill me for this.”

Left with no recourse, Stiles balled up his fist and _punched_ Derek as hard as he could.

“Ugh! Ow! God!”

What was Derek’s face made of even, _stone_? Pure muscle couldn’t possibly hurt that much, right? Unless rigor mortis had already set in? Was it possible to go into rigor mortis while still being alive? Was Derek even _alive_ just now?

The bond crackled to life, fizzing in and out like a bad radio connection, but Stiles could definitely feel _something_ coming through.

Pain. A lot of pain.

Yeah, he could see why Derek contemplated sawing off his arm. _He_ wanted to saw off his own arm, and he wasn’t even getting the full empathic blast.

Then the pain stopped.

“That… was… awesome!”

He didn’t realise he’d yelled those words aloud until Scott shot him a weird look. But what caught his attention was the way Derek stopped, like someone had pressed the _pause_ button on his movements. He turned slowly, and _stared_ at Stiles like he’d never seen him before.

“Are you okay?” asked Scott, looking like a kicked puppy.

“Well,” Derek gave a tiny aborted shrug, “except for the agonising pain.”

“I'm guessing the ability to use sarcasm is a good sign of health,” said Stiles without thinking, and then wanted to slap himself. That was a horrible impression to leave on his soulmate, but Derek already pretty much hated him, nothing new there.

And now Derek was dragging Scott out of the door, leaving Stiles behind. If he wasn’t currently feeling a mix of annoyance and flashes of muted grief that were definitely _not his_ coming through the almost-tangible thread at the back of his mind, he would have thought he’d hallucinated it all.

What the hell was he going to do now?

~*~*~*~*~

“Well, Dad, there’s a… _conversation_ that we need to have.”

Sheriff Stilinski glanced down at the grilled steak on his plate, topped with a generous serving of sweet potato mash – because Stiles might be trying to butter his Dad up, but he had limits – and leaned back in his seat. “What did you do this time?” he asked tiredly.

Stiles’ mouth opened and closed soundlessly. “I resent that!” he protested hotly, even though his Dad had every right to be suspicious. It wasn’t the first time he’d attempted to bribe his father with food.

The Sheriff frowned faintly, straightening from his slump in his seat. “What’s wrong, Stiles?” he asked, far more gently.

Great, so now his father was onto him, but with the attentive look fixed upon him Stiles found himself at a loss. What was he supposed to say? Hi, Dad, so I found my soulmate today? Problem is, he’s your primary suspect for that murder. Yes, I’m talking about Derek Hale. I kind of ran into him in the woods. No, I can’t tell you how we ended up coming into skin contact.

The whole thing sounded incredibly sketchy even in his own head.

“Sooooo,” he dragged the sound out, his mind whirling with possibilities. “I was just looking things up on Wikipedia, you know me, and apparently 90% of people find their soulmate between the ages of 16 and 26.” Those statistics were real, he’d looked it up as soon as he’d gotten home.

For once, he wasn’t a statistical anomaly. Stiles didn’t know how to feel about that.

“Uh huh,” said his Dad, with a look on his face that meant, _go on_.

“So there’s a chance I might find mine soon,” continued Stiles, barely flinching at the lie. “But what if they’re a criminal? What if they’re not a woman? What if they hate the way I am?” Because he knew, he _knew_ he wasn’t considered a good catch by pretty much anyone, like, ever. Who’d want to even date, much less be bonded to, a hyperactive spazz with no brain-to-mouth filter?

“Then they don’t deserve you,” his Dad told him resolutely, and belatedly Stiles realised that he’d been speaking aloud. “As for the rest of it, as long as your soulmate makes you happy, I don’t care.”

Stiles thought about bringing up Derek Hale again, but decided against it at the last moment.

“Thanks, Dad.”

~*~*~*~*~

“I thought you said you barely knew him.”

Stiles sighed. “All right, so… I might know him a little bit better than that.” He winced at the blistering look the Sheriff sent his way. “He was shot, okay? And I punched him because he was losing consciousness; I wasn’t expecting to be _bonded_ to him!”

His Dad stopped in the middle of the corridor. His phone was ringing, but he didn’t give it a second glance.

Stiles rewound what he just said back in his head, and winced. He’d been meaning to tell his Dad, but… not like this.

“You’re _bonded_ to Derek Hale?”

“Er.” Stiles scratched his head, the short strands of his buzz cut prickling against his hand, and then sighed. “Yes.”

“Why’d you have to go and _ruin my life_ ,” his Dad groaned, and then blinked down at his phone as though he’d temporarily forgotten that it was ringing. “Get him to come for dinner, Saturday night,” he told Stiles, before he hit the _accept call_ button.

~*~*~*~*~

“Dude, we need to talk,” Stiles told the husk of the Hale house.

He didn’t normally set foot into the house, given that he didn’t _actually_ have a death wish, but if the house could handle having Derek living in it for so many weeks, it probably wasn’t going to fall down around his ears.

Just in case, though, he laid a hand on the crumbling wood of the bannister, wincing at the traces of ash that rubbed off onto his palm.

There was no response.

“I know you’re on the second floor, and that you can hear me,” Stiles told the empty staircase, “and in fact, I think you’ve probably heard my jeep the moment I came up the driveway, because man those potholes are rough on my baby; seriously, I do not know how your Camaro handles them at all.” He was just babbling now, trying to cover up the ominous silence on his own, because it felt more and more like he was talking to himself – even though he could feel Derek at the back of his head, where the werewolf had sort of made himself a little nest and refused to come out, and the bond was telling him exactly where on the second floor Derek was.

Stiles sighed. “I know about Kate,” he said clearly.

His all-too-human eyes couldn’t register more than a rapid blur, before Derek had – apparently leapt straight from the second floor without bothering with the staircase, Scott couldn’t even manage half of that, was that seriously the difference between an alpha and a beta – knocked him to the floor – _ouch_ – and his claws were digging lightly into the back of Stiles’ neck.

“Another word, and I will rip your throat out.”

Stiles blinked, because there was the expected anger, yes, but also threaded through with frustration and anxiety and… was that _fear_? He couldn’t really tell through the suffocating miasma of guilt that permeated through the entire bond, filling his head, until the five little pinpricks of pain at the back of his neck was the only thing grounding him, reminding him that the guilt wasn’t his own.

“My Dad wants to meet you,” he barely managed to choke out, and felt Derek’s weight shift, the bond suddenly shot through with confusion. “Since you’re exonerated and all.”

~*~*~*~*~

Shockingly, the doorbell rang at 6pm sharp on Saturday night.

Stiles started, bouncing up from the couch. The bond was a feedback loop of apprehension, and with some effort he managed to untwist his fingers and school his features into some semblance of calm.

He _knew_ it was Derek at the door, and yet seeing the other man’s face made him jump anyway.

“Hi,” Derek smiled uncertainly. His eyes slid past Stiles, a little uptick in his anxiety level, and Stiles didn’t need to turn around to know his father was probably leaning against the frame of the kitchen door. He dearly hoped that his father wasn’t casually polishing his shotgun.

Could werewolves die from normal bullet wounds?

Derek looked a little like someone marching off to the executioner’s block when he set foot over the threshold. His right eye twitched involuntarily when the door slammed shut behind him, as though it was the cell door of a prison. He didn’t give any outward signs, but mentally he did the equivalent of breathing in slowly and squaring his shoulders.

The fluctuating state of fear and anxiety he seemed to live in dimmed a little, until Stiles could breathe again. One of these days, Derek Hale was seriously going to accidentally trigger a panic attack in him.

A wave of guilt washed down the bond, followed by what felt like a concerted effort to clamp everything down, until Derek was just a heavily muffled presence in his head. Stiles paused, halfway through the living room. So, apparently Derek hadn’t been the only one broadcasting, although this was the first time Derek actually responded directly to him.

Dinner was already laid out on the table, and Stiles huffed at the hopeful look on his father’s face when Derek presented him with a bottle of red wine. “Fine, fine, but only because red wine’s supposed to be good for your heart!” Which was probably why Derek had brought it in the first place, come to think of it, instead of beer or something else Stiles would have just confiscated.

Stiles didn’t know how to feel about the fact that Derek actually listened to his rants, now and then.

Dinner was an awkward affair, overall, and Stiles sort of wanted to melt into the floor when his Dad started grilling Derek halfway through. He also didn’t know what the supernatural-to-mundane etiquette was – like, should they mention the bit where Derek was a werewolf? It wasn’t like _that_ was covered by Wikipedia.

The Sheriff sighed, and put down his fork.

“Look, son, despite what you might be thinking, I don’t actually hate you for bonding with Stiles.” He shot his own son an exasperated look. “Especially if he wasn’t lying – for once – and he really only ended up triggering the bond because you were unconscious and he punched you in the face.”

Derek abandoned all pretence of eating – Stiles knew for a fact that he’d just been pushing his food around the plate – and sat up, coils of anxiety fizzing through the bond.

“I won’t pretend to know what it’s like to lose everyone you’ve ever loved, because I at least still have Stiles left.” Wow. That was… blunt. Or maybe his Dad was just sick of everyone beating about the bush, with all those increasingly elaborate stories Stiles was spinning up to keep the supernatural element out of it. “But that’s the thing: Stiles is the only thing I have left.”

Derek opened his mouth, possibly to apologise, but his father didn’t stop. “I don’t care what you’ve done before; I’ve done stupid things after my – my wife’s death –” he glanced down at the dining table for a moment “– but I _do_ care what you’re going to do from now onwards. I do care whether you’re even going to _try_ and make my son happy.”

“Dad,” croaked Stiles, nearly tripping over the table leg as he lurched out of his seat to hug his father. The Sheriff returned it without a moment of hesitation, wrapping his arms around Stiles in his patented Stilinski bear hug, full of warmth and the smell of gun oil stained permanently into his uniform.

He gave Stiles a pat on the back for good measure, and then transferred his attention back to Derek. “So, welcome to the family, son.”

Derek didn’t say anything, but the bond between them pulsed once, bright with tentative hope.

They had a lot to work through, but maybe, _maybe_ , having Derek Hale as his soulmate wouldn’t be so bad after all.

**Author's Note:**

> [I have a Tumblr if you're interested!](starriewolf.tumblr.com)


End file.
